The Joker by Edgar Wallace (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📖

he said his letter was handed to him by Miss Rivers

soon after six and that he hadn’t seen her since.’

 

Jim Carlton thought quickly.

 

‘Just before eleven!’ exclaimed Elk. ‘Gosh! I’d forgotten that!’

 

‘What?’

 

‘That’s the time he passed us and went into his garage—I could see the

car from the top of the library—it wasn’t his own and I didn’t know it

was Harlow until he turned into the gate at the end of the courtyard. And

he was a long time in the garage too! I’ll bet—’

 

It needed this clue, slight as it was, to spur Jim Carlton into instant

action. At two o’clock in the morning, when Mr Harlow was finishing his

last cigar, Jim Carlton and Elk arrived with the backing of a search

warrant…

 

‘How amusing!’ said Mr Harlow sombrely, as he rose from the table and

handed back the warrant to Jim. ‘Do you mind letting me have a copy of

that interesting document one of these days. I should like it for my

autobiography!’

 

‘You can save your breath, Harlow,’ said Jim roughly. ‘The present visit

is nothing more than a little inconvenience for you. I’m not arresting

you for the outrage on Sir Joseph Layton; I am not taking you for the

murder of Mrs Gibbins!’

 

‘Merciful as you are strong!’ murmured Harlow. ‘Murder is an unpleasant

word.’

 

His face was rather pale and seemed to have developed new lines and

furrows since Jim saw him last.

 

‘What’s this talk of murder?’

 

At the sound of the harsh voice the inspector spun round. Standing in the

doorway was the hard-faced Mrs Edwins. It was the first time he had seen

her, but he could recognise instantly from Aileen’s description. Stiffly

erect, her arms folded before her, she stood waiting, her hard black eyes

blazing with malignity. She was a more menacing figure then Harlow

himself.

 

‘What is this talk of murder? Who has been murdered, I should like to

know?’ she demanded.

 

But Harlow pointed past her.

 

‘“Murder” was not your cue, Lucy Edwins,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Your sense

of the dramatic will be your ruin!’

 

For a moment it seemed that the woman would disobey that imperious

gesture. She blinked at him resentfully, almost with hate, and then

turned, stiff as a ramrod, and disappeared.

 

‘Now, Mr Carlton, let us be our calm selves. What do you expect to find

in this house? I imagine it is something very important.’

 

‘Imagine!’ said Jim sternly. ‘Harlow, I’m going to put my cards on the

table and tell you just what I want to find. First and foremost, I want

Aileen Rivers, who came here earlier in the evening with a letter from

her employer. She has not been seen since.’

 

Mr Harlow did not smile.

 

‘Really? Not been seen by you, I suppose you mean—’

 

‘Wait, I haven’t finished. A car was seen to drive away from Ellenbury’s

office in Theobald’s Road at half-past five. Miss Rivers was in that

car—where is she now?’

 

Harlow looked at him steadily. ‘I will not say that I don’t

know—unnecessary lies are stupid.’

 

He opened a drawer of his desk with great deliberation, and, taking out a

bunch of keys, dropped them on his blotting-pad.

 

‘You may search every room in the house,’ he said. ‘And then tell me if

you are as wise as I!’

 

The library itself needed no prolonged inspection. Jim went up the

stairs, followed by Elk, and came at last to the top floor, to find

Harlow waiting for him at the door of the little elevator.

 

‘That is my housekeeper’s room’—he pointed. ‘You will recognise the door

as the one which you locked a few hours ago.’

 

‘And this?’ asked Jim.

 

Harlow turned the handle and threw the other door wide open. The room was

as Jim had seen it on the previous night, and was untenanted.

 

‘We will start with the roof,’ said Carlton, and went up the narrow

flight of stairs, opened the door and stepped out onto the flat roof.

This time he carried a powerful torch, but here also he drew blank. He

made a circuit of the parapet and came back to where Harlow was waiting

at the open door.

 

‘Have you found a secret stairway?’ Harlow was innocence itself. ‘They

are quite common in Park Lane, but still a novelty in Pimlico. You can

touch a spring, something goes click, and there is a narrow winding stair

leading to a still more secret room!’

 

Jim made no answer to this sarcasm, but went downstairs.

 

From room to room he passed, but there was no sign of the girl or of the

bearded man and at last he reached the ground floor.

 

‘You have cellars? I should like to see them.’

 

Harlow opened a small door in the panelling of the vestibule. They were

in a rather high, flagged passage, at the end of which was the kitchen

and servants’ hall. From an open archway in one of the walls a flight of

stone stairs descended to the basement. This was made up of three

cellars, two of which were used for the storage of wine.

 

‘This is not the whole extent of the cellar space,’ said Jim

suspiciously, when he had finished his inspection.

 

‘There are no other cellars,’ replied Harlow, with a weary sigh. ‘My good

man, how very suspicious you are! Would you like to see the garage?’

 

Jim followed him up the steps, through the hall. He was being played

with—Jim Carlton knew that, and yet for some reason was not rattled.

 

‘Harlow, where is Miss Rivers? You suggested you knew.’

 

Harlow inclined his head graciously. ‘If you will allow me to drive you a

very little journey, I can promise that I will put an end to all your

present doubts.’

 

They faced one another—Harlow towards the bright light that streamed

from the garage.

 

‘I’ll call your bluff,’ said Jim at last.

 

A slow smile dawned on Harlow’s face. ‘So many people have done that,’ he

said, ‘and yet here I am, with a royal flush permanently in hand! And all

who have called—where are their chips?’

 

He opened the car door and after a second’s hesitation Jim entered, Mr

Elk following. The big man shut the door.

 

‘I have a high opinion of the police,’ he said, ‘and I realise that I am

making you look rather foolish: I am sorry! This story of Harlow’s

penultimate joke shall go no farther than me.’

 

He moved away from the car and then very leisurely he walked to the wall,

put up his hand, and the garage was in darkness.

 

Jim saw the manoeuvre and leapt to the door, but it was locked; and even

as he struggled to lower the window, there was a whine of machinery and

the car began to sink slowly through the floor. Down, down it went upon

its platform and then, when the roof was a little below the level of the

floor, the platform tilted forward, and the car slid gently onto an

unseen track and thudded against rubber buffers and stopped.

 

Jim had got the window down and was half through when the hydraulic

pillars beneath the platform shot up and closed the aperture with a

gentle thud. In another second Elk was free. Wrenching open the driver’s

door, Jim switched on the powerful head lamps and illuminated the chamber

to which the car had sunk.

 

There were two more machines there; one in particular attracted his

attention—an old hire car grey with mud which was still wet. Evidently

the place was a very ordinary type of underground garage, though he had

never seen such expensive equipment as a hydraulic lift in a private

establishment. The walls were of dressed stone; at one end was a low iron

door, not locked, so far as he could see, but fastened with two steel

bolts. It was probably a petrol store, he thought, and the position under

the courtyard before the garage confirmed this guess.

 

He looked at Elk.

 

‘How foolish do you feel?’ he asked bitterly.

 

Elk shook his head.

 

‘Nothin’ makes me feel foolish,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but I certainly

didn’t expect to see the end so soon.’

 

‘End?’

 

Elk nodded.

 

‘Not mine—not yours: Harlow’s. He’s through—what’s penultimate mean,

anyway?’

 

And when it was explained, Elk’s face brightened.

 

‘He’s got one big line to finish on? I’ll bet it is the biggest joke

that’s ever made the police stop laffin. And I’ll tell you—’

 

He stopped; both heads went round towards the little iron door. Somebody

was knocking feebly and Jim’s heart almost stopped beating.

 

‘Somebody behind that door,’ said Elk. ‘I never thought old man Harlow

ran a dungeon.’

 

Jim ran to the place, slipped back the bolts and flung the iron door

open—there staggered into the light the wild and dishevelled figure of

an elderly man. For a moment Jim did not recognise him. He was coatless,

his crumpled collar was unfastened, but it was the look in his face that

transfixed the astonished men.

 

‘Ellenbury!’ breathed Jim.

 

The lawyer it was, but the change in him since Jim had seen him last was

startling. The wide opened eyes glared from one to the other and then he

raised his trembling hand to his mouth.

 

‘Where is she?’ he whispered fiercely. ‘What did he do with her?’

 

Jim’s heart turned to lead.

 

‘Who—Miss Rivers?’

 

Ellenbury peered at him as though he remembered his voice but could not

identify him.

 

‘Stebbings’s girl!’ he croaked. ‘He took this axe—Harlow!’ The old man

swung an imaginary axe. ‘Ugh!… killed her!’

 

Jim Carlton’s hand was thrust to the wall for support.

 

His face was colourless—he could not speak and it was Elk who took up

the questioning of this apparition.

 

‘Killed her?’

 

Ellenbury nodded.

 

‘Where—?’

 

‘On the edge of the kitchen garden… there’s a pit. You could put

somebody there and nobody would guess. He knew all about the pit. I

didn’t know he was the chauffeur—he had a little black moustache and

he’d been driving me all day.’

 

Elk laid his hand gently on the little man’s shoulder and he shrank back

with a sound of weeping.

 

‘Listen, Mr Ellenbury, you must tell us all you know and try to be calm.

Nobody will hurt you. Did he kill Miss Rivers?’

 

The man nodded violently.

 

‘With an axe—my axe… I saw her lying there on the furnace-room floor.

She was very beautiful and white and I saw that he had killed her and

went back to the house for I did not wish—I did not wish… ‘ he

shuddered, his face in his hands, ‘to see her in that pit, with the

water… green water… ugh… ugh!’

 

He was fighting back the vision, his long fingers working like a piano

player’s.

 

‘Yes… you saw her again?’ asked Jim huskily. He had. ‘Where?’

 

‘In the back of the car—where the suitcases were—all huddled up on the

floor with a blanket thrown over her. I sat beside the devil and he

talked! So softly! God! You’d have thought he had never murdered anybody!

He said he was going to take me for a holiday—where I’d get well. But I

knew he was lying—I knew the devil was lying and that he was forging new

links in my chain. He put me in there!’

 

He almost screamed the words as his wavering finger pointed to the open

door of his prison.

 

‘Ellenbury, for